How can I manage all of my skills on hotbars?

[FinaSel]

When I leveled Summoner and Black Mage, I didn't have much trouble managing my skills on hot bars.
I also don't have this issue with WHM.

But I am leveling Ninja now and there are so many skills and it seems like I need to use all of them very frequently.

I play on a PC.
I have 3 main hotbars I use for skills. Bottom hot bar has the basic combo attacks, plus Trick and Sneak attack and Death Blossom toward the middle. (which is very uncomfortable for me, but I can't find a better place.)
Second bar has ninjutsu, Kassatsu, Mug, Jugulate, Throwing Knives
Top bar has Assasinate, Mutilation, Internal Release, Blood for Blood

Other skills used less frequently are scattered about (Second Wind, Goad, Invigorate etc)

I use the shift key to target the second row and the Control key to target the top.

But my hands are not very big and I can't comfortably reach beyond the 4 key.
I sometimes need to use the mouse to click on a skill, which seems so inefficient.

I often sometimes can't even see the location of the mouse on my screen.

I am only level 51 now, but it's still overwhelming trying to reach every skill!

Do I need to buy one of those mouses with like 10 keys on them? (mine only has 3 extra programmable keys)

Please teach me how I can better manage my hotbars for efficiency and comfortableness.

[Krindor]

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control. Another modifier if you can't reach further than 4 and R is Alt, while it might be uncomfortable at the start getting used to it is probably the only way for you to not be forced to use a 10+ key mouse. Also how do you hold your hand over the keyboard, while 6 is quite far to reach, 5 shouldn't be hard to reach even with a small hand if you position your hand correctly.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control. Another modifier if you can't reach further than 4 and R is Alt, while it might be uncomfortable at the start getting used to it is probably the only way for you to not be forced to use a 10+ key mouse. Also how do you hold your hand over the keyboard, while 6 is quite far to reach, 5 shouldn't be hard to reach even with a small hand if you position your hand correctly.

Can you not just use the other alt and control on the right for the other half of the keyboard?

[Atoli]

Just play with both hands, one for 1-5 and one for 6-´

[Krindor]

Can you not just use the other alt and control on the right for the other half of the keyboard?

Would have to let go of the mouse to do that, that would be dangerous in any scenario where you need to dodge, don't see a way to quickly control your character without the mouse.

[FunkyBunch]

SNIP

Use a controller?
I have one hotbar plus cross tabs (32 skills) and that's all the skills minus four that I need (Wasp, Viper, Sneak Attack,Shade Shift) which I relegated to hotbar 2 that I almost never use.

[FinaSel]

I have considered using a controller, but I don't have one. I'd need to buy one...

If I used two hands, how would I use the mouse?
I constantly use the mouse in battle to look at my surroundings. It is often more efficient for clicking on enemies than "Tab", which is just...I can't even.

I have considered using the ALT key, but I play with a Japanese keyboard and the key to switch language settings is directly next to the ALT key. It also means the ALT key is about half the size of the ALT key on non-Japanese keyboards.
It creates three problems.
1.) It's quite hard to hit the ALT key while playing.
2.) Due to the position of it, it's hard to press the ALT key and number keys at the same time. I need to position my hand in a very strange way.
3.) If I press the language settings key by accident and suddenly need to type, I find myself in a predicament, since I might have the press that key several more times to switch back to the desired input.

Exactly which hotkeys are you using? You can add easy to reach letters as well. Personally I use Q, E, R, T and 1-6 and then shift/control.

Thank you. I will try using those keys too.

[Shurrikhan]

If you need another easy to reach modifier key, you can always turn Caps Lock into a Function key or either Alt. I use a large variety of keys, but I never have to reach very far. I left Q, E, R, T, F, and bound lock-on to C as per 1.x, but I use Caps 1-4, Shift 1-4, Ctrl 1-4; Caps, Shift, and Ctrl -Q, -E, and -R; Shift-F, -Z, -X, -C, -T, -G, -V, -B; Alt -S, -D, -F, -G, -X, -C, -V, -B; and Ctrl -A, -S, -D, -F, -Z, -X-, -C, -V. It may sound overly complex, but it keeps everything in very easy reach, and supports more than just rotational binds (including multiple tab types, target of target, set focus target, target focus target, target last attacker (only really use in PvP), signs, macro commands, mouse-overs, etc, and of course the bloating PvP skills). Its really hard to run out of binds on a keyboard.

You can also bind some abilities to the mouse, along with modifier key uses for each.

If you haven't gotten too used to your current setup yet, I'd recommend trying to systematize according to a given priority, focusing on a particular setting, such as raids. For instance, I'd keep CDs that you want to have immediately visible for setting up burst or making snap decisions in a highly visible position, such as the top-left corner or whatnot, and then set up the remaining CDs of similar length or priority in order by said cooldown length or their usage order in burst, etc.

If you don't need binding reminders and want to free up space, you can also set your bindings across hotbars 1-3, and then place duplicates of just the abilities you need to track on 4-6, swapping between the two for a binds-visible or compact mode.

[cheolsu]

You should use a mouse with more buttons. I use an mmo mouse with 12 buttons. Then I use ctrl, alt, and shift to modify the mouse. But you could also use a mouse with very few buttons. If you do that, then put ctrl, shift, and alt on the mouse and use that to modify your keyboard.

[FinaSel]

Thank you for your advice.

I tried to use Caps Lock, but when it try to bind it, nothing happens. I think it is because I use Japanese keyboard.
A Japanese keyboard has several keys an English one does not, and some keys are in different locations. Caps Lock also switching between languages.
(Unlike the two language keys, which switch between type of input. It is a little difficult to explain unless you use it.)

But, I did bind Q, E, and R, and their Shift and Controls too.
So it gives me 9 extra keybinds I didn't have before. It's really useful!

I will probably use T in the future when I feel I need a new skill to bind.

You should use a mouse with more buttons. I use an mmo mouse with 12 buttons. Then I use ctrl, alt, and shift to modify the mouse. But you could also use a mouse with very few buttons. If you do that, then put ctrl, shift, and alt on the mouse and use that to modify your keyboard.

I have considered getting a mouse with more buttons. If using these new keybinds isn't enough, I will probably do that.

Mapping Control, Shift, and Alt to the mouse is an interesting idea, but I currently use my mouse keys for other actions. I've been using them for my White Mage since I started playing and I think it would take a long time to get used to not having them available.

Since WHM is my main, I don't want to sacrifice those keybinds.

But as I play more jobs, I might need to adjust my mappings in the end.
Thank you for the advice.